We have an exciting announcement. We have been awarded a grant of £150,000 from the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund to continue our Carbon Saving Project!

This funding will enable improvements to our buildings – energy-efficiency measures that will improve the look and feel of our buildings, both for church and community use. These measures will significantly reduce our energy consumption, which we estimate will reduce our energy bills by £9,800 over the next five years. This saving is on top of the £6,000 per annum reduction that we have already achieved!

Here’s a summary of the main energy-efficiency measures that will be installed:

Replacing, where possible, external doors with high thermal performance doors

The work will be carried out in phases, starting this summer and reaching completion by March 2017. With careful planning, we will be able to keep our buildings open throughout the project and minimise any disruption to church activities.

In addition to installing energy-efficiency measures to our buildings, we will launch free weekly community events this summer, including a community lunch serving of soup made with locally grown ingredients, a playgroup for parents with young children, and cooking classes. Our kitchen will be refurbished to provide the facilities required to run these activities!

Through all of our community activities, we will promote behaviour changes towards low-carbon lifestyles. Each event will include a free ‘swap shop’ to facilitate the reuse of used items such as toys, household goods and clothing. In addition, participants will be able to sign up for a Green Home Makeover to receive free energy-saving products, such as LED bulbs, hot water tank jackets and radiator reflector panels.

The Climate Challenge Fund grant award was announced by Dr Aileen McLeod MSP, Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform. In the announcement she said:

"Communities across Scotland are rising to the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge with plans to improve their environment and drive down carbon emissions. Today the Scottish Government is backing those plans with almost £10 million to make them happen.

Climate change affects us all, and we must all do what we can limit its impact. Scotland is on track to exceed our world-leading 2020 target for a 42 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and our high ambition approach has described as ‘exemplary’ by Christiana Figueres, the head of the UN climate body, during her recent visit to Scotland."

We’re grateful to the Scottish Government for providing this additional funding and are excited by the potential of our weekly community events that launch this summer. If you have any questions, please email me at jamesanthony@gatechurch.co.uk or call me on 01382 221222.